Martha Cooper

Martha Cooper is a legendary American photographer, who has been documenting street art for more than 40 years. In 1979, while a staff photographer at the New York Post, she had a chance encounter with a neighbourhood boy, who introduced her to the graffiti writer DONDI. Cooper had long been drawn to photographing children at play, and graffiti seemed a logical extension of this theme. She went on to document many of graffiti’s most iconic works and their creators, often caught “in the act”; the social aspect of her images reveals her background in anthropology as well as art. Cooper’s 1984 book, “Subway Art,” co-authored with photographer Henry Chalfant, helped the graffiti movement spread throughout the world. Cooper continues to document art on the streets, and her body of work is one of the most significant of its kind.